Freedom of Information Act 2000 Request

The number of children (aged 10 to 17 years) that pleaded unfit for the charge of murder between the years of 2006 and 2016 in England and Wales.

Request

Would it be possible for data on the number of children (aged 10 to 17 years) that pleaded unfit for the charge of murder between the years of 2006 and 2016 in England and Wales.

I am aware that only 444 children were not prosecuted against during that time for murder (according to the MoJ), I need to know how many of those 444 children did in fact successfully plead unfit.

Response

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not disaggregate the data held regarding offences of murder as described in your request.

In order to establish whether murder offences involve the circumstances described in your request, a manual review of prosecutions that commenced for murder offences during the time period requested would be required. As an indication of the work this would involve the equivalent of 5,191 cases were prosecuted.

Section 12(1) of the FOI Act means public authorities are not obliged to comply with a request for information if it estimates the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit for central government it is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3.5 working days determining whether the department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

We believe that the cost of reviewing 5,191 cases would exceed the appropriate limit. Consequently, we are not obliged to comply with your request.

Under Section 16 of the FOI Act we have an obligation to advise what, if any, information may assist you with your request. The Ministry of Justice may be able to offer further assistance regarding the data obtained from them. They can be contacted via the following link: